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(An updated version of this essay lives here.)
One of the most dangerous errors of our time is the belief that human beings are uniquely violent animals, barely restrained from committing atrocities on each other by the constraints of ethics, religion, and the state.
It may seem odd to some to dispute this, given the apparently ceaseless flow of atrocity reports from Bosnia, Somalia, Lebanon and Los Angeles that we suffer every day. But, in fact, a very little study of animal ethology (and some application of ethological methods to human behavior) suffices to show the unbiased mind that human beings are not especially violent animals.
Desmond Morris, in his fascinating book Manwatching', for example, shows that the instinctive fighting style of human beings seems to be rather carefully optimized to keep us from injuring one another. Films of street scuffles show that "instinctive" fighting consists largely of shoving and overhand blows to the head/shoulders/ribcage area.
It is remarkably difficult to seriously injure a human being this way; the preferred target areas are mostly bone, and the instinctive striking style delivers rather little force for given effort. It is enlightening to compare this fumbling behavior to the focussed soft-tissue strike of a martial artist, who (having learned to override instinct) can easily kill with one blow.
It is also a fact, well-known to military planners, that somewhere around 70% of troops in their first combat-fire situation find themselves frozen, unable to trigger lethal weapons at a live enemy. It takes training and intense re-socialization to make soldiers out of raw recruits. And it is a notable point, to which we shall return later, that said socialization has to concentrate on getting a trainee to obey orders and identify with the group. (Major David Pierson of the U.S. Army wrote an illuminating essay on this topic in the June 1999 Military Review).
Criminal violence is strongly correlated with overcrowding and stress, conditions that any biologist knows can make even a laboratory mouse crazy. To see the contrast clearly, compare an urban riot with post-hurricane or -flood responses in rural areas. Faced with common disaster, it is more typical of humans to pull together than pull apart.
Individual human beings, outside of a tiny minority of sociopaths and psychopaths, are simply not natural killers. Why, then, is the belief in innate human viciousness so pervasive in our culture? And what is this belief costing us?
The historical roots of this belief are not hard to trace. The Judeo-Christian creation story claims that human beings exist in a fallen, sinful state; and Genesis narrates two great acts of revolt against God, the second of which is the first murder. Cain kills Abel, and we inherit the "mark of Cain", and the myth of Cain — the belief that we are all somehow murderers at bottom.
Until the twentieth century, Judeo-Christianity tended to focus on the first one; the Serpent's apple, popularly if not theologically equated with the discovery of sexuality. But as sexual taboos have lost their old forbidding force, the "mark of Cain" has become relatively more important in the Judeo-Christian idea of "original sin". The same churches and synagogues that blessed "just wars" in former centuries have become strongholds
of ideological pacifism.
But there is a second, possibly more important source of the man-as-killer myth in the philosophy of the Enlightenment — Thomas Hobbes's depiction of the state of nature as a "warre of all against all", and the reactionary naturism of Rousseau and the post-Enlightenment Romantics. Today these originally opposing worldviews have become fused into a view of nature and humanity that combines the worst (and least factual) of both.
Hobbes, writing a rationalization of the system of absolute monarchy under the Stuart kings of England, constructed an argument that in a state of nature without government the conflicting desires of human beings would pit every man against his neighbor in a bloodbath without end. Hobbes referred to and assumed "wild violence" as the normal state of humans in what anthropologists now call "pre-state" societies; that very term, in fact, reflects the Hobbesian myth,
The obvious flaw in Hobbes's argument is that he mistook a sufficient condition for suppressing the "warre" (the existence of a strong central state) for a necessary one. He underestimated the innate sociability of human beings. The anthropological and historical record affords numerous examples of "pre-state" societies (even quite large multiethnic/multilingual populations) which, while violent against outsiders, successfully maintained internal peace.
If Hobbes underestimated the sociability of man, Rousseau and his followers overestimated it; or, at least, they overestimated the sociability of primitive man. By contrasting the nobility and tranquility they claimed to see in rural nature and the Noble Savage with the all-too-evident filth, poverty and crowding in the booming cities of the Industrial Revolution, they secularized the Fall of Man. As their spiritual descendants today
still do, they overlooked the fact that the urban poor had unanimously voted with their feet to escape an even nastier rural poverty.
The Rousseauian myth of technological Man as an ugly scab on the face of pristine Nature has become so pervasive in Western culture as to largely drive out the older opposing image of "Nature, red in tooth and claw" from the popular mind. Perhaps this was inevitable as humans achieved more and more control over their environment; protection from famine, plague, foul weather, predators, and other inconveniences of nature encouraged the fond delusion that only human nastiness makes the world a hard place.
Until the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, the Rousseauian view of man and nature was a luxury confined to intellectuals and the idle rich. Only as increases in urbanization and average wealth isolated most of society from nature did it become an unarticulated and unexamined basic of popular and academic belief. (In his book "War Before Civilization", Lawrence Keeley has given us a trenchant analysis of the way in which the Rousseauian myth reduced large swathes of cultural anthropology to uttering blinkered nonsense.)
In reality, Nature is a violent arena of intra- and inter-species competition in which murder for gain is an everyday event and ecological fluctuations commonly lead to mass death. Human societies, outside of wartime, are almost miraculously stable and nonviolent by contrast. But the unconscious prejudice of even educated Westerners today is likely to be that the opposite is true. The Hobbesian view of the "warre of all against all" has survived only as a description of human behavior, not of the wider state of nature. Pop ecology has replaced pop theology; the new myth is of man the killer ape.
Another, darker kind of romanticism is at work as well. To a person who feels fundamentally powerless, the belief that one is somehow intrinsically deadly can be a cherished illusion. Its marketers know full well that violence fantasy sells not to the accomplished, the wealthy and the wise, but rather to working stiffs trapped in dead-end jobs, to frustrated adolescents, to retirees — the marginalized, the lonely and the lost.
To these people, the killer-ape myth is consolation. If all else fails, it offers the dark promise of a final berserkergang, unleashing the mythic murderer inside to express all those aggravations in a gory and vengeful catharsis. But if seven out of ten humans can't pull the trigger on an enemy they have every reason to believe is trying to kill them, it seems unlikely that ninety-seven out of a hundred could make themselves murder.
And, in fact, less than one half of one percent of the present human population ever kills in peacetime; murders are more than an order of magnitude less common than fatal household accidents. Furthermore, all but a vanishingly small number of murders are performed by males between the ages of 15 and 25, and the overwhelming majority of those by unmarried males. One's odds of being killed by a human outside that demographic bracket are comparable to one's chances of being killed by a lightning strike.
War is the great exception, the great legitimizer of murder, the one arena in which ordinary humans routinely become killers. The special prevalence of the killer-ape myth in our time doubtless owes something to the horror and visibility of 20th-century war.
Campaigns of genocide and repressions such as the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin's engineered famines, the Ankha massacres in Cambodia, and "ethnic cleansing" in Yugoslavia loom even larger in the popular mind than war as support for the myth of man the killer. But they should not; such atrocities are invariably conceived and planned by selected, tiny minorities far fewer than .5% of the population.
We have seen that in normal circumstances, human beings are not killers; and, in fact, most have instincts which make it extremely difficult for them to engage in lethal violence. How do we reconcile this with the continuing pattern of human violence in war? And, to restate to one of our original questions, what is belief in the myth of man the killer doing to us?
We shall soon see that the answers to these two questions are intimately related — because there is a crucial commonality between war and genocide, one not shared with the comparatively negligible lethalities of criminals and the individually insane. Both war and genocide depend, critically, on the habit of
killing on orders. Pierson observes, tellingly, that atrocities "are generally initiated by overcontrolled personality types in second-in-command positions, not by undercontrolled personality types." Terrorism, too, depends on the habit of obedience; it is not Osama bin Laden who died in the 9/11 attack but his minions.
This is part of what Hannah Arendt was describing when, after the Nuremberg trials, she penned her unforgettable phrase "the banality of evil". The instinct that facilitated the atrocities at Belsen-Bergen and Treblinka and Dachau was not a red-handed delight in murder, but rather uncritical submission to the orders of alpha males — even when those orders were for horror and death.
Human beings are social primates with social instincts. One of those instincts is docility, a predisposition to obey the tribe leader and other dominant males. This was originally adaptive; fewer status fights meant more able bodies in the tribe or hunting band. It was especially important that bachelor males, unmarried 15-to-25 year-old men, obey orders even when those orders involved risk and killing. These bachelors were the tribe's hunters, warriors, scouts, and risk-takers; a band would flourish best if they were both aggressive towards outsiders and amenable to social control.
Over most of human evolutionary history, the multiplier effect of docility was limited by the small size (250 or less, usually much less) of human social units. But when a single alpha male or cooperating group of alpha males could command the aggressive bachelor males of a large city or entire nation, the rules changed. Warfare and genocide became possible.
Actually, neither war nor genocide needs more than a comparative handful of murderers — not much larger a cohort than the half-percent to percent that commits lethal violence in peacetime. Both, however, require the obedience of a large supporting population. Factories must work overtime. Ammunition trucks must be driven where the bullets are needed. People must agree not to see, not to hear, not to notice certain things. Orders must be obeyed.
The experiments described in Stanley Milgram's 1974 book "The Perils of Obedience" demonstrated how otherwise ethical people could be induced to actively torture another person by the presence of an authority figure commanding and legitimizing the violence. They remain among the most powerful and disturbing results in experimental psychology.
Human beings are not natural killers; very, very few ever learn to enjoy murder or torture. Human beings, however, are sufficiently docile that many can eventually be taught to kill, to support killing, or to consent to killing on the command of an alpha male, entirely dissociating themselves from responsibility for the act. Our original sin is not murderousness — it is obedience.
And this brings us to the final reason for the prevalence of the myth of man the killer; that it encourages obedience and legitimizes social control of the individual. The man who fears Hobbes's "warre", who sees every one of his neighbors as a potential murderer, will surrender nearly anything to be protected from them. He will call for a strong hand from above; he will become a willing instrument in the oppression of his fellows. He may even allow himself to be turned into a killer in fact. Society will be atomized into millions of fearful fragments, each reacting to the fear of fantasied individual violence by sponsoring the political conditions for real violence on a large scale.
Even when the fear of violence is less acute, the myth of man the killer well serves power elites of all kinds. To define the central problem of society as the repression of a universal individual tendency to violence is to imply an authoritarian solution; it is to deny without examination the proposition that individual self-interest and voluntary cooperation are sufficient for civil order. (To cite one current example, the myth of man the killer is a major unexamined premise behind the drive for gun control.)
In sum, the myth of man the killer degrades and ultimately disempowers the individual, and unhelpfully deflects attention from the social mechanisms and social instincts that actually underlie virtually all violence. If we are all innately killers, no one is responsible; the sporadic violence of crime and terrorism and the more systematic violence of governments (whether in "state" or "pre-state" societies, and in wartime or otherwise) is as inevitable as sex.
On the other hand, if we recognize that most violence (and all large-scale violence) arises from obedience, and especially from the commission of aggressive violence by bachelor males at the command of alpha male pack leaders, then we can begin to ask more fruitful questions. Like: what can we do, culturally, to disrupt this causal chain?
First, we must recognize the primary locus and scope of the problem. By any measure, the pre-eminent form of aggressive pack violence is violence by governments, in either its explicit form as warfare and genocide or in more or less disguised peacetime versions. Take as one indicator the most pessimistic estimate of the 20th-century death toll from private aggression and set it against the low-end figures for deaths by government-sponsored violence (that is, count only war casualties, deliberate genocides, and extra-legal violence by organs of government; do not count the deaths incurred in the enforcement of even the most dubious and oppressive laws). Even with these assumptions biasing the ratio to the low side, the ratio is clearly 1000:1 or worse.
Readers skeptical of this ratio should reflect tha government-directed genocides alone (excluding warfare entirely) are estimated to have accounted for more than 250,000,000 deaths between the massacre of the Armenians in 1915 and the "ethic cleansings" of Bosnia and Rwanda-Burundi in the late 1990s. Even the 9/11 atrocity and other acts of terrorism, grim as they have been, are mere droplets besides the oceans of blood spilled by state action.
In fact, the domination of total pack violence by government aggression reaches even further than that 1000:1 ratio would indicate. Pack violence by governments serves as a model and a legitimizing excuse not merely for government violence, but for private violence as well. The one thing all tyrants have in common is their belief that in their special cause, aggression is justified; private criminals learn and profit by that example. The contagion of mass violence is spread by the very institutions which ground their legitimacy in the mission of suppressing it — even as they perpetrate most of it.
And that is ultimately why the myth of man the killer ape is most dangerous. Because when we tremble in fear before the specter of individual violence, we excuse or encourage social violence; we feed the authoritarian myths and self-justifications that built the Nazi death camps and the Soviet gulags.
There is no near-term hope that we can edit either aggression or docility out of the human genome. And the individual small-scale violence of criminals and the insane is a mere distraction from the horrific and vast reality that is government-sanctioned murder and the government-sanctioned threat of murder.
To address the real problem in an effective way, we must therefore change our cultures so that either alpha males calling themselves "government" cease giving orders to perform aggression, or our bachelor males cease following those orders. Neither Hobbes's counsel of obedience to the state nor Rousseau's idolization of the primitive can address the central violence of the modern era — state-sponsored mass death.
To end that scourge, we must get beyond the myth of man the killer and learn to trust and empower the individual conscience once again; to recognize and affirm the individual predisposition to make peaceful choices in the non-sociopathic 97% of the population; and to recognize what Stanley Milgram showed us; that our signpost on the path away from mass violence reads "I shall not obey!"


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subset: commoncrawl


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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – June 10, 2020MEDIA CONTACT: KIRA CALM LEWIS, 301-446-3327 - email@example.com
M-NCPPC, DEPARTMENT OF PARKS AND RECREATION Announces Registration for Virtual Summer Clubhouses
RIVERDALE, MD – The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC), Department of Parks and Recreation announces the registration for our virtual Summer Clubhouses beginning this coming Monday, June 15, 2020, at 9 a.m. Parents and guardians can go online beginning today, to view the guide at pgparks.com/Virtual Summer Clubhouses and review all of the options.
Summer Clubhouses will be available for youth, ages 6 to 17, (up to 21 for Therapeutic Recreation programs), from June 29 through August 14. Registration begins for Prince George's County residents only on June 15 and for everyone else on June 22. A PARKS DIRECT account is required for registration. Cost is $10/per one week session. *The June 29th week sessions are $8/week (due to the July 3rd closure) for the Independence Day Holiday.
"In addition to keeping our parks and outdoor spaces open for activities and recreation, we wanted to provide engaging and creative activities for youth this summer, in a safe and responsible way," states M-NCPPC, Department of Parks and Recreation Director, Bill Tyler. "As soon as our facility doors closed, the recreation programmers began creating content for an online experience that young people enjoy. We are offering activities to make them move, to make them think, to make them imagine and create, and just let them have some fun. It is summer after all," concludes Tyler.
The Virtual Clubhouses are designed to provide a safe space online for youth to engage with their peers. Clubhouses will help youth build confidence by learning new experiences and enhance academic success through continued structured programming utilizing the Microsoft TEAMS platform, download here.
A variety of activities will be available including STEAM, sports, arts, music, theater, and more. Some of the Clubhouses include:
Please contact the Customer Service Help Desk at firstname.lastname@example.com or, 301-699-2255;
TTY: 301-699-2544, for questions about your PARKS DIRECT account.


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• manna •
Pronunciation: mæ-nê • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. An unexpected, gratuitous gift, a windfall. 2. In the Old Testament, food miraculously provided to the Israelites in the desert during their flight from Egypt. 3. A sweet secretion from the manna ash or similar plants, used as a laxative and the principal source of mannitol.
Notes: We encounter no derivational relatives of this staunchly independent word, and the only caveat is to not forget to double the N in the middle of it. It doesn't end with an H, either.
In Play: This word is most likely found before the phrase "from heaven", as in, "When his shorts fell down in the art museum, Mona Lisa's smile came to him as manna from heaven." The third sense of today's Good Word is still alive and kicking around Europe: "Castelbuon has its own speciality: panettone made with the local manna liquor."
Word History: Today's Good Word is an Old English borrowing from Late Latin manna, a borrowing from Greek manna, a borrowing from Hebrew man. In Greek and Latin it was used specifically with reference to the substance miraculously supplied to the Israelites during their trek across the Sinai desert (Exodus xvi: 15). Hebrew man is a West Semitic word originally meaning "to be kind, show favor, patronize", seen in Aramaic mann, akin to Arabic manna "favor, gift, manna". The manna of the Israelites may have originally been the Mount Sinai manna produced by the tamarisk tree and eaten like honey. Arabic mann and Egyptian mannu can be used in this sense. So, the Hebrew word may have originally been the name used for a natural food product consumed by the Israelites. (The suggestion that we do today's Good Word dropped like manna itself from Diane Lyons.)
P.S. - Register for the Daily Good Word E-Mail! - You can get our daily Good Word sent directly to you via e-mail in either HTML or Text format. Go to our Registration Page to sign up today!


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The security services recently began implementing a policy that makes it harder for East Jerusalem residents to travel to certain West Bank cities.
The security services recently began implementing a policy that makes it harder for East Jerusalem residents to travel to certain West Bank cities.
According to orders issued by the head of the Israel Defense Forces' Central Command, Major General Yair Naveh, the main crossing between Jerusalem and Bethlehem is now closed to Palestinians who hold Israeli identity cards.
An IDF spokesman confirmed that enforcement of the orders issued by the Central Command in October 2000, which forbade holders of Israeli identity cards to enter Area A (the Oslo Accords' term for areas under full Palestinian control) for security reasons, is now stricter. The spokesman added that requests to enter Area A are handled on a case by case basis.
However, Defense Minister Amir Peretz's office said that he was not aware of any such decision.
In practice, the policy is being implemented at only one crossing, albeit a central one. However, the intention is to expand enforcement to other crossings.
The new policy is upsetting East Jerusalem's 237,000 residents, the vast majority of whom are not Israeli citizens, as their lives are intertwined with the nearby West Bank cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem, whether by family ties, commercial interests or culture. These residents are being cut off from their environs by the new IDF policy.
Thus Christians from East Jerusalem, for instance, who wish to visit the holy sites in Bethlehem now have to go to the Qalandiyeh crossing, north of the city, where the Israel Police have said that they are unable to implement the policy.
The IDF spokesman insisted that the crossing is the police's responsibility and it is their duty to enforce the order. In response, the police said that a Supreme Court decision forbids preventing East Jerusalem residents from visiting neighborhoods in the north of the city, which are categorized as either Area B (joint Israeli-Palestinian control) or Area C (full Israeli control). According to the police, it is the IDF's job to keep holders of Israeli identity cards from entering Area A.
Police sources expressed puzzlement at the fact that the IDF is setting policy but not implementing it.
The IDF said that "in view of the security situation, there has been a change in the enforcement policy of GOC Central Command Order 378, dated October 5, 2000, which forbids Israeli residents from entering Area A of the Palestinian Authority, such as Ramallah and Bethlehem." The order was issued to prevent Israeli citizens from being kidnapped by Palestinians. However, the police said that it is not aware of a single case in which a re sident of East Jerusalem had been kidnapped.
A senior Defense Ministry source suggested that forbidding East Jerusalem residents to enter Area A is just one part of a broader policy of making life harder for Palestinian residents of Jerusalem. The source pointed out that this policy includes preventing students who have been abroad for long periods from visiting the city.


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Published: December 2004
Pages: 103
Author(s): Monique M. Lance, Scott A. Richardson and Harriet L. Allen
Executive Summary
Sea otters existed along the Washington coast for thousands of years before they were extirpated by an intensive harvest for their valuable pelts that began in the mid-1700s. From about 1911 to 1969, sea otters were absent from the state. In 1969 and 1970, 59 sea otters were reintroduced to the Washington coast from Amchitka Island, Alaska. The sea otter was listed as a state endangered species in 1981, due to its small population size, restricted distribution, and vulnerability.
From 1989 to the most recent survey in 2004, the population has been growing at an average annual rate of 8.2%. From 2000 to 2004, annual survey counts have ranged from 504 to 743 sea otters. The current sea otter range in Washington extends from just south of Destruction Island on the outer coast to Pillar Point in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, with concentrations in the vicinities of Destruction Island, Perkins Reef, Cape Johnson, Sand Point, Cape Alava, and Duk Point. A few individual sea otters have been seen in Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands as well as along the Oregon coast.
The current distribution of sea otters in Washington includes only a portion of the pre-exploitation range, which extended south to the Columbia River with a major concentration off of Point Grenville and northward along the Olympia Peninsula and into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. At the present time, Washington sea otters occupy almost exclusively rocky habitat along the Olympic Peninsula coast and western Strait of Juan de Fuca. It is not possible to predict whether the population will continue to grow and spread and, if so, at what rate or in which direction. If they do expand their distribution, they could disperse into historically occupied sandy habitat to the south (e.g. Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay), spread eastward along the Strait of Juan de Fuca and into Puget Sound, or move north across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Vancouver Island where more than 2,500 sea otters exist in British Columbia. Habitat-based carrying capacity estimates for the historic sea otter range in Washington vary from 1,372 to 2,734 otters, based on four measures of habitat availability.
Sea otters feed primarily on benthic invertebrates, consuming many pounds of prey each day to meet their high metabolic needs. In Washington, they consume shellfish species including sea urchins, clams, crabs and mussels. Studies in Washington and elsewhere have shown that sea otter predation on sea urchins may indirectly enhance the growth of kelp and kelp-associated communities. Shellfish are important to commercial, recreational, and tribal fisheries in Washington and predation by sea otters in a specific area can be significant and result in localized fisheries management issues.
Oil spills are the single greatest anthropogenic threat to sea otters. Washington's sea otter population is particularly vulnerable to oil spills because it is concentrated along a relatively small geographic stretch of coastline where vessel traffic is steady. The relatively isolated nature of the current population also has implications for genetic diversity that intensify if a catastrophic event such as an oil spill were to occur. Recent studies indicate infectious diseases may be an important mortality factor in sea otters and warrant continued monitoring. Entanglement in fishing nets may cause significant losses in some parts of the sea otter range. In Washington, a small number of sea otters are taken in tribal gill net fisheries along the northern coast. These issues and others, combined with the species' popular appeal, necessitate management and recovery efforts for sea otters in Washington, as they have for sea otter populations in Alaska, California, and British Columbia.
Goals of the Washington sea otter recovery program are to implement strategies that will ensure a selfsustaining sea otter population in Washington through the foreseeable future; and to manage the Washington sea otter stock in a manner consistent with the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, other state and federal laws, court rulings and federal treaties with Native American tribes. The recovery plan outlines strategies which, when implemented, will enhance sea otter habitat and populations to the point where the long-term survival of the species in nature can be ensured and it can be downlisted from state Threatened status.
Recovery objectives are based on achieving population levels of 60-80 percent of the estimated carrying capacity (K) for Washington. Sea otters will be considered for downlisting from State Endangered to State Threatened status when: 1) the average population level over a 3-year period equals or exceeds 1,640 sea otters (60% of K) in Washington, and 2) Washington's sea otter population is distributed such that a single catastrophic event, such as a major oil spill, would be unlikely to cause severe decline or extirpation of the population. Sea otters will be considered for downlisting from state Threatened status when the average population level over a 3-year period equals or exceeds 2,187 sea otters (80% of K), and management plans or agreements are in place by the state's co-managers that provide for the continued viability of the sea otter population in Washington. Sea otter recovery strategies include conducting research and monitoring to determine abundance, distribution and health of the population, protection of sea otters and their habitat, prevention and preparation for oil spills, exchange of information, increased public education and outreach and development of cooperative, proactive management approaches among involved entities to reduce potential future sea otter-fishery conflicts.
Suggested citation
Draft documents
Draft documents are provided for informational purposes only. Drafts may contain factual inaccuracies and may not reflect current WDFW policy.


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You could travel the world over, but doubt you would see all the beauty shown on Sky Watch Friday.
The sun in the rising mode. An old saying, red in the morning sailors take warning.
The sun starting its descent for the day.
Red at night, sailor's delight.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Sky Watch Friday
Posted by LV at 3:57 PM
Labels: skywatch friday
31 comments:
- AnnA said...
Good evening Lv!
Lovely skies, you are showing this time, and the sayng from the sailor - I don't think I've heard something like this in swedish.(But there are others, some old ones I've heard from old persons.I don't think I can translate them for you.)
Have a nice weekend!/
PS! If you look here:
you will maybe see something you can remember from your childhood.DS - November 19, 2009 at 4:47 PM
- AnnA said...
PS! But some of the things you are too young to remember...DS
- November 19, 2009 at 4:49 PM
- Louise said...
Wonderful skies!
Just FYI, you link was incorrect. I fixed it, but please be so kind to take a moment to check it before you hit "enter" at the SWF site. That way people will get to your site and where they want to go.
Thanks so much for sharing this brilliance with us! - November 19, 2009 at 5:07 PM
- Gill - That British Woman said...
I love the second shot the best, but all are lovely.
Gill in Canada - November 19, 2009 at 5:31 PM
- Betsy Banks Adams said...
Beautiful post, LV... There's nothing better than a Texas sky!!!!!
I did a Texas post today. Check it out.
Betsy - November 19, 2009 at 6:38 PM
- eileeninmd said...
Wonderful photos of the sunrise/sunset. The colors are beautiful.
- November 19, 2009 at 6:39 PM
- Heart2Heart said...
Thanks for sharing those old sailors warnings. I couldn't remember which one is which?
Love and Hugs ~ Kat - November 19, 2009 at 6:50 PM
- eden said...
I love all your photos Lv. wonderfully captured!
have a good weekend - November 19, 2009 at 7:05 PM
- Mary said...
Oh so beautiful -- sunrise and sunset both!
- November 19, 2009 at 7:21 PM
- hetty said...
Wow! Fantastic colours!
- November 19, 2009 at 8:00 PM
- Cathy said...
I love the beautiful colors!!!
- November 19, 2009 at 8:04 PM
- alicesg said...
Lovely set of photos for skywatch. Love the rich colours of the sky.
- November 19, 2009 at 8:22 PM
- CC said...
Oh my gosh, what gorgeous pictures.There is no beauty like that which nature provides..
- November 19, 2009 at 9:15 PM
- XoXo said...
Really red and they looks so magnificent...looks like it melted your lens. :)
- November 19, 2009 at 9:16 PM
- Janie said...
LV, these sun shots are just lovely!
- November 19, 2009 at 9:46 PM
- farmlady said...
Sweet dreams....
- November 20, 2009 at 12:19 AM
- Marvin said...
Since I'm no sailor, but the red sunset and sunrise were a delight. Thanks for sharing.
- November 20, 2009 at 1:31 AM
- Bestemor Drillo said...
Beautiful colors in your photos;)
Have a nice day! - November 20, 2009 at 2:32 AM
- My name is Riet said...
Your sky pictures are beautiful. Love the colours.
- November 20, 2009 at 4:15 AM
- Pearl Maple said...
Fabulous colours in your sky this week. Thanks for sharing the glorious of nature at play with Sky Watch Friday and your kind comments on my blog earlier.
- November 20, 2009 at 4:29 AM
- Eric said...
The second one is my fav, nice compo!!! Well done!!
Thanks for your lovely comment on my SWF-pics!!! - November 20, 2009 at 5:47 AM
- Anonymous said...
So beautiful.
Happy Friday! - November 20, 2009 at 6:50 AM
- My Grama's Soul said...
God gave us beautiful skies - didn't he?? Beautiful pictures.
Have a good weekend,
Jo - November 20, 2009 at 9:36 AM
- Olde Dame Penniwig said...
I never get tired of seeing color in the sky!
- November 20, 2009 at 9:42 AM
- Halcyon said...
Those are beautiful skies!
Happy Friday!!! - November 20, 2009 at 9:44 AM
- joo said...
Beautiful post!
Happy weekend for you:) - November 20, 2009 at 11:14 AM
- island timer said...
lovely skies!! amazing colors!
Thanks for stopping by my place, too. - November 20, 2009 at 2:38 PM
- storyteller -SouthernCalifornia said...
What GORGEOUS orange skies ;-)
Thanks for sharing!
Hugs and blessings, - November 20, 2009 at 4:53 PM
- Unknown said...
Nice shot!
- November 20, 2009 at 6:59 PM
- Debra said...
Wow! Now those are some beautiful colors of orange, yellow and red! Spectacular skies....great shots! I adore sunrise and sunset pictures!
- November 20, 2009 at 9:59 PM
- Irene said...
Beautiful shots! And thanks for visiting my blog!
- November 22, 2009 at 2:15 PM


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Frequently Asked Questions about Catheter-associated Urinary Tract Infections
An indwelling urinary catheter is a drainage tube that is inserted into the urinary bladder through the urethra, is left in place, and is connected to a closed collection system. Alternative methods of urinary drainage may be employed in some patients. Intermittent ("in-and-out") catheterization involves brief insertion of a catheter into the bladder through the urethra to drain urine at intervals. An external catheter is a urine containment device that fits over or adheres to the genitalia and is attached to a urinary drainage bag. The most commonly used external catheter is a soft flexible sheath that fits over the penis ("condom" catheter). A suprapubic catheter is surgically inserted into the bladder through an incision above the pubis.
A urinary tract infection (UTI) is an infection that involves any of the organs or structures of the urinary tract, including the kidneys, ureters, bladder, and urethra. Some of the common symptoms of a urinary tract infection are burning or pain in the lower abdomen (that is, below the stomach), fever, burning during urination, or an increase in the frequency of urination. UTIs are the most common type of healthcare-associated infection (HAI) and are most often caused by the placement or presence of a catheter in the urinary tract.
A catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) occurs when germs (usually bacteria) enter the urinary tract through the urinary catheter and cause infection. CAUTIs have been associated with increased morbidity, mortality, healthcare costs, and length of stay. The risk of CAUTI can be reduced by ensuring that catheters are used only when needed and removed as soon as possible; that catheters are placed using proper aseptic technique; and that the closed sterile drainage system is maintained.
Yes, most CAUTIs can be treated with antibiotics and/or removal or change of the catheter. The healthcare provider will determine the best treatment for each patient.
Hospitals should follow the recommendations in the 2009 CDC Guideline for Prevention of Catheter-associated Urinary Tract Infections. The guideline emphasizes the proper use, insertion, and maintenance of urinary catheters in different healthcare settings. It also presents effective quality improvement programs that healthcare facilities can use to prevent CAUTIs.
Patients with a urinary catheter can take the following precautions to prevent CAUTI:
- Understand why the catheter is needed and ask the healthcare provider frequently if the catheter is still needed.
- If the patient has a long-term catheter, they must clean their hands before and after touching the catheter.
- Check the position of the urine bag; it should always be below the level of the bladder.
- Do not tug or pull on the tubing.
- Do not twist or kink the catheter tubing.
The following online resources provide more information about CAUTI:
- Guideline for Prevention of Catheter-associated Urinary Tract Infections, 2009
- IDSA Guidelinesexternal icon
- NHSN – National Healthcare Safety Network
- Strategies to Prevent Catheter‐Associated Urinary Tract Infections in Acute Care Hospitals: 2014 Updateexternal icon
- Institute for Healthcare Improvement Prevent CAUTI How-to guideexternal icon
- APIC Guide to the Elimination of CAUTI pdf icon[PDF – 42 pages]external icon


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A little while ago the airbag light on my 1996 Nissan Maxima started flashing. My regular mechanic told me that the airbag was fine, if needed it would deploy, and that the issue was most likely electrical. This is where the problem begins. He said that to turn the light off would require removing a few electrical components, it would take a lot of time, and eventually would require a specific electronic device to access the module for the light and turn it off.
Now, I do trust this mechanic, he's been taking care of the car for 7 years now, got 180,000 miles out of it so far. I am just worried that there might be an easier fix that he would not be familiar with.
Anyone know much about the electrical controls of the airbag in the mid-90's Maxima?
(Side note, I would love to add the tags "airbag" and "warning-light" but I don't have the necessary reputation to create them.)


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Thursday, May 12, 2011
WASHINGTON, DC – Over 60% of wireless customers with traditional cellular plans would support a government rule to avoid cell phone "bill shock", according to a new poll released today by Consumers Union, nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports. Such a rule would require mobile network providers to notify customers when they are about to exceed their plan's allowance in order to avoid overage charges.
The poll also found wide support – 57 percent – for a government rule requiring that wireless providers give their customers the option to have features disabled when they are in danger of exceeding their plan's allowance. The survey also found that 1 in 5 respondents had received an unexpected charge on a cell phone bill during the past year, with 38% reporting being hit with a charge of $30 or more.
Parul P. Desai, policy counsel for Consumers Union, said, "This new survey makes it clear that the public would back an FCC effort to help fight 'bill shock.' Every year, millions of cell phone owners are being caught off guard by overage charges. It's time to give wireless customers the tools they need to avoid these charges. The FCC needs to adopt its pending Bill Shock rule to ensure consumers are uniformly notified as they approach their usage limits and offer consumers a chance to adjust their plans."
The results of the survey were filed with the FCC on Wednesday in support of the FCC's proposed rules.
The Consumer Reports National Research Center conducted a telephone survey using two nationally representative probability samples: landline telephone households and cell phones. 994 interviews were completed among adults aged 18+ who own a cell phone. Interviewing took place over April 28-May 1, 2011. The sampling error is +/- 3.2 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.
For a copy of the survey, please contact David Butler or Kara Kelber at Consumers Union.
David Butler, Kara Kelber: 202-462-6262


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Show All Answers
It is an ad-valorem (value based) property tax that is the liability of the person or entity assessed for the tax. Because the tax is not secured by real property (such as land) the tax is called "UNSECURED."
All property that is not real property is considered personal property and therefore is issued an Unsecured tax bill. Some typical items assessed and collected on the unsecured roll are:
The lien for unsecured taxes is against the assessee and not against the property. The assessee can be any person owning, claiming, possessing, or controlling the property on the lien date.
The Assessor establishes the value of the unsecured property on January 1. This date is often referred to as the Tax Lien date. Ownership on the lien date, determines the obligation to pay taxes: Disposal, removal, or sale of the object of the assessment after the lien date will not affect the tax bill nor relieve the assessee of liability. No proration is made by the Tax Collector on unsecured taxes. Any proration is strictly a private matter between buyer and seller.
The tax bill will be issued to the owner as of the lien date January 1. Disposal, removal, or sale of the assets after the lien date will not affect the tax bill. No prorations are made by the tax collector on unsecured property taxes. Any pro-ration is strictly a private matter between buyer and seller. The owner of record as of January 1 is responsible for payment and will be lien if bill is not paid.
You should also contact the Assessor's Office to make sure the ownership of record has been updated. Failure to do so could result in future billings and liens.
The January 1 value is multiplied by the tax rate (usually 1% plus voter approved indebtedness). The unsecured tax rate is the prior year secured rate.
An unsecured tax bill covers a fiscal year. The fiscal year begins July 1 and ends on June 30 of the following calendar year.
A fiscal year is the County's accounting cycle. It is from July 1 each year through June 30 the following year.
Example: 1999-00 fiscal year is July 1, 1999 to June 30, 2000.
The County Assessor determines the person or entity to be assessed and the value of the property being assessed. The Auditor places a record on the roll for the Tax Collector to collect. The Tax Collector mails the tax bill to the latest billable address the Assessor has on file from the assesee.
Most unsecured bills are mailed July 31. These bills must be paid on or before 5 p.m. on August 31. If the bill is mailed after July 31, the delinquent date is extended to the end of the month following the bill's issuance. In other words, if your bill is mailed in September, the delinquent date would be October 31.
If you do not receive a tax bill by July 10, contact the Treasurer - Collector's Office at (925) 608-9500.
Most unsecured bills are mailed before July 31st. These bills must be paid on or before August 31st. If the due date falls on a Saturday, Sunday or a legal holiday, the deadline is extended until the next business day.
If the bill is mailed after July 31st, the delinquent date is extended to the end of the month following the bill's issuance. For example, if your bill were mailed in September, the delinquent date would be October 31st. If your payment is not received or postmarked by the delinquent date, a 10% penalty and a $30.00 collection fee are added to your bill.
If your bill remains unpaid for two additional months, a monthly penalty of 1.5% begins to accrue (an 18% per annum rate). In addition, if a Certificate of Tax Lien is recorded, an additional fee of $20.00 will be required to release the lien.
Generally, an annual unsecured tax bill is mailed out by June 30th each year. If you do not receive a tax bill by July 10th, contact the Treasurer-Tax Collector's office immediately. Call (925) 608-9500.
NOTE: The penalty of 10% shown on the stub of your bill is not applied until the delinquency date. Do not include the penalty if payment is made on or before that date.
A tax penalty of 10% plus a $30 administrative fee will be charged on the date of the delinquency. Additional penalties at the rate of 1.5 % per month will be charged starting the 1st day of the second month after the delinquency date until the tax is paid in full.
Upon delinquency the following collection methods may be used to collect the tax:
Send payment to the address shown on the front of your coupon. If you do not have a tax coupon, then mail payment to:
Yes. U.S.P.S. postmark dates are honored as if the payment were received in the office as of the date of the postmark.
No. California law requires the Tax Collector to accept the US postmark, not a private meter date, as the date of payment.
Yes. For a 3rd-party processing fee you can pay with your credit or debit card Unsecured property taxes either in person at our Cashier counter or on our website at www.cctax.us. You can also make an electronic check payment online at no service charge.
Yes. Disposal of the property after the January 1 lien date does not eliminate your tax liability. If you sell the property before the unsecured tax bill is issued, make sure you collect an estimated amount for the unsecured tax from the buyer.
If the assessee name or the property being assessed is incorrect, contact the Assessor's Office immediately at (925) 313-7600.
If the value of the property is incorrect, contact the Assessor or if between July 2 and November 30 contact the Assessment Appeals Board. In the meantime, you must still pay the taxes by the due date in order to avoid penalties, liens and enforced collections. Should the taxes be reduced later, a refund will be issued.
Information about the appeals process can be obtained by calling (925) 335-1920 or writing to the Clerk of the Assessment Appeals Board, Suite 150, 1025 Escobar Street, 1st Floor, Martinez, CA 94553
If the tax rate is incorrect, contact the Auditor's Office, Property Tax Division, at (925) 646-2236.
For delinquency date or payment information, contact the Tax Collector at (925) 608-9500.
Yes. To avoid penalties, liens or enforced collections, the tax must be paid prior to it becoming delinquent. Should the tax be reduced later, a refund will be issued.
Escape bills in excess of $500 may be eligible to be paid on a FOUR-YEAR PAYMENT PLAN. The payments are payable over a four-year period as per California Revenue and Taxation Code.
To enroll a bill on the Four Year Plan, you must:
Yes. The Treasurer-Tax Collector's Office may enforce the collection of unsecured property taxes at any time subsequent to the entry of the tax lien on the assessment roll. Upon delinquency the following collection methods may be used to collect the tax: bank liens, summary judgments and legal actions.
Delinquent unsecured taxes may also be collected by seizure and sale of any of the following property belonging or assessed to the assessee (Sec. 2951 R&T Code):
In addition to penalties imposed, the Tax Collector may collect actual costs of collection incurred by the County up to the time the delinquency is paid.


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Now streaming on:
"The Paperboy" is great trash, and as Pauline Kael told us, the movies are so seldom great art that if we can't appreciate great trash, we might as well not go at all. This is a humid, deep South wallow in raunch, with the wrong man on Death Row, the right man lurking in a swamp with his inbred family, a dead sheriff, a curious newspaper reporter, a slutty blond slattern, the younger man who adores her and alligators, lots of 'em.
The characters in "The Paperboy" spend a lot of time wading up to their waists in swamp water, and the movie wades in right along with them. When the movie played at Cannes last May, some viewers hooted and complained a movie in such bad taste shouldn't have been shown in the French temple of film art. I have news for them. If this film has been in good taste, that would have been in bad taste.
Set in 1969, "The Paperboy" stars Matthew McConaughey as Ward Jansen, a reporter for the Miami Times, who is visiting his hometown of Lately, Fla., because he believes a man on Death Row has been wrongly convicted for the murder of a sheriff. That man is Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack), a human snake with a vicious streak, who we suspect should be executed on general principle. Ward recruits his kid brother Jack (Zac Efron) as an assistant to himself and his fellow reporter Yardley Acheman (David Oyelowo), a black man with a British accent that has the locals looking at him sideways.
They meet up with Charlotte Bless (Nicole Kidman), a trashy blond who seems to fashion her appearance after close study of the Trashy Lingerie catalog. She could have been the model for the dames on the paperback covers of Mickey Spillane steamers in the 1950s. Charlotte has never met Hillary Van Wetter, but they've been corresponding and are engaged to be married.
I know a lot of women fall in love with men on Death Row, but Charlotte is a case study. She's in love with the very hopelessness of her romance, its masochistic idealism. In a scene that defies description, Ward and Jack take her for her first in-person meeting with Hillary, and so much does their romance reside in their fevered minds that they achieve simultaneous orgasm while 10 feet apart.
A scene like that takes courage, but Nicole Kidman isn't finished. Charlotte is a merciless flirt around poor Jack, a champion swimmer who has been booted out of college and comes home to deliver papers for the local newspaper owned by his father (Scott Glenn). His lean and muscular body seems to contain a brain that is not in equally great shape. Charlotte reclines seductively on the beach next to him, with various bits peeking out in friendliness from beneath her bikini. To cool off, Jack plunges into the ocean and is attacked by jellyfish.
Half-conscious, he crawls ashore, and some local girls scream that the allergic reaction can be reversed by quickly urinating on him. That's the kind of life-saving information, which, if true, you'd think would be widely known. Whether it works or not, you will discover in "The Paperboy."
This lurid story begins by being told in flashback by the Jansen family's cook and maid, Anita Chester (Macy Gray), who has seen some hard times since the events took place. She seems to know exactly what happened but is reluctant to come right out and say, and if I were a black maid in 1969 in Lately, Fla., you wouldn't get a peep out of me.
"The Paperboy" is the first film directed by Lee Daniels since he made "Precious," and it shows the same instinct for overwrought melodrama. It's based on a novel by Pete Dexter ("Paris Trout"), who co-wrote the screenplay, and follows in the tradition of Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen and John D. MacDonald, who all seem to draw a peculiar inspiration from the murks of Florida.
I know exactly the kinds of people who booed this film at Cannes. They cheer minimalist dirges filmed in gloom and defiant obscurity. I sometimes admire such films. But with "The Paperboy," you have to wade in there up to your waist and be prepared to take all necessary measures against jellyfish.
107 minutes
McConaughey as Ward Jansen Matthew
Scott Glenn as WW
David Oyelowo as Yardley
Zac Efron as Jack
Nicole Kidman as Charlotte
John Cusack as Hillary


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The Masters 1999
A Preview of the 1999 Masters Tournament
Two years ago, the golf world took notice as Tiger Woods exploded onto the stage with his stunning domination of the field at the Masters. Last year Mark O'Meara won his first major in thrilling fashion at Augusta when he drained a 20-foot putt on the 18th hole to beat Fred Couples and David Duval. In 1999, Messrs. Couples and Duval will be back, along with O'Meara, Woods, and a dozen or so others who will challenge for the famous green jacket awarded to the tournament champion for the last 50 years. What's new this year?Unlike the other three majors, the Masters is played at the same course every year. But the 18 holes fans have become so familiar with have seen some changes. The rough surrounding all the fairways has been grown longer this year to provide a bit more of a challenge. And because the original course may be too short for today's advanced equipment, four holes have undergone renovation since last year:
All the changes have combined to make the course just a bit tougher this year. Organizers may have gotten a little sensitive when Woods dominated the course in 1997. The ContendersAs always, the field is strong. There's the guy who holds the tournament record (Woods), the defending champ (O'Meara) and the number one player and hottest golfer in the world (Duval). You don't get any hotter than Duval is right now. He has won four of the eight tournaments on the PGA Tour this year, and has already broken the Tour single-season money record. Still, he has yet to win a major tournament. It should be interesting to see how he handles being a favorite at the Masters. O'Meara, who won two Majors in 1998 and the PGA Tour player of the year, gets surprisingly little respect. Some seem to think that it's tough to get lucky at Augusta two years in a row. Only one person, Nick Faldo, has won back-to-back Masters in the last 30 years. Although O'Meara putts the fast greens at Augusta extremely well, his length off the tee can't compete with the big hitters and will hurt him even more with this year's course changes. Woods has been consistent but unspectacular this year. He shares (with Davis Love III) the PGA Tour lead with six top-10 finishes, and is a proven winner on this course. If he can regain his "A" game and get used to his new caddie, this could be Tiger's chance to remind everyone just how darn good he really is. Fred Couples must always be mentioned when the Masters is discussed. He has never missed a cut at Augusta and has eight top-10 finishes in 14 tries, including his 1992 championship. He is long enough off the tee to eagle the par 5s.
The cool-as-a-cucumber Ernie Els has proven he can play under pressure, but his putter will have to come up big this week if he hopes to win his first Masters. The tall South African has shown he can win majors as a two-time U.S. Open champ, but Augusta is another neighborhood. Davis Love has been playing consistently good golf this year and is tied with Woods for the Tour lead in top 10s. He has played very well at Augusta in years past and is a big driver, so he has the stuff to win it. The biggest question mark will be his putting. If he starts three-putting early on it could be a long week for him. This Masters starts Thursday, April 8. The final round will be televised on CBS Sunday afternoon. |


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Alleged 'iPad 3' photos showcase larger camera, tapered case
The purported "iPad 3" photos clearly show (machine translation) the the rear-facing camera is larger than the iPad 2's, and the Taiwanese publication Apple Daily that published the pictures on Saturday claims that the change was made to accommodate an 8 megapixel sensor.
This would be a significant jump in resolution for the tablet, though a much-welcomed upgrade from the harshly-reviewed 1MP camera found on the iPad 2.
Previously leaked photos of an alleged "iPad 3" prototype case showed that the size of the camera hole was similar to that of the iPad 2, but it was noted that there was a change in how the sensor would be mounted.
In comparison, the iPhone 3G, 3GS and iPhone 4 all have higher resolution imagers at 2MP, 3.2MP and 5MP, respectively. The newest iPhone 4S has one of the best on-phone cameras in the world, boasting redesigned optics and a backside illuminated 8MP sensor capable of shooting 1080p videos.
Along with the change in lens size, the case of the alleged next generation iPad looks to be more beveled than its predecessor. This slight change in design is consistent with previously-published images of the back case, and is supposedly meant to afford more space for a larger battery.
Purported 'iPad 3' case and comparison photos. | Source: Apple Daily
The new photos are added to the pile of rumors and speculation that has slowly grown over the past month as the one-year anniversary of the iPad 2's launch grows near.
The "iPad 3" is rumored to sport a Sharp manufactured Retina Display with a pixel density similar to that of the iPhone 4S, wireless 4G LTE connectivity and a proprietary A6 CPU.
Rumors claim that Apple will announce the anticipated next generation tablet on March 7, almost exactly one year since the iPad 2 was introduced in 2011.


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Circuit Judge Matthew Destry agreed with prosecutors that Matthew Bent, 18, deserved the same sentence as the youth who flicked the lighter during the 2009 attack on Michael Brewer, who was then 15. Although Bent did not set the fire or pour the flammable liquid, Destry said he was just as much to blame. Bent was convicted of aggravated battery in June.
"I cannot ignore that, but for Mr. Bent's orchestration of these events, none of this would have happened," Destry said.
Before he was sentenced, Bent turned and apologized to Brewer but said he was not the ringleader.
"I didn't intend for any of this to happen," he said. "I didn't tell nobody to do that."
Brewer survived by leaping into an apartment complex swimming pool but suffered severe burns over two-thirds of his body. In court Thursday, he looked in good shape physically but family members say his skin grafts still cause pain and he suffers from frequent nightmares. His mother, Valerie Brewer, said the family was satisfied with the sentence.
"What happened to Michael touched people around the world. We got justice today," she said.
Brewer himself declined comment. "I'm good," he said.
The series of events began with a marijuana pipe that Brewer testified Bent wanted him to purchase. When Brewer declined, Bent allegedly went to the Brewer home and tried to steal a bicycle. Bent was arrested on theft charges.
The next day, fearing a reprisal, Brewer stayed home from Deerfield Beach Middle School that most of the boys involved attended. When school let out, Bent and a group of boys were walking home when they happened to find a jug of rubbing alcohol atop an apartment complex wall. About the same time, they ran into Brewer, who had decided to go over to a friend's house.
What happened next is in dispute. Some boys say Bent offered to pay them to punch Brewer, and others say it was Bent who signaled that they would pour the alcohol on him. Ultimately, according to trial testimony, the jug was dumped on Brewer by Denver Colorado Jarvis and then Jesus Mendez flicked his lighter.
Jarvis and Mendez pleaded no contest to attempted second-degree murder charges. Jarvis is serving an eight-year sentence and Mendez was sentenced to 11 years. Bent at one point was offered a plea deal and eight-year sentence, but opted for trial. He was acquitted of the attempted murder charge but convicted of aggravated battery in June.
Prosecutor Maria Schneider had urged Destry to impose the 11-year term on Bent, still less than the 15-year maximum.
"This young man refuses to accept any responsibility for what happened to Michael Brewer. I think that's very disturbing," she said.
Bent will be given credit for the three-plus years he has already spent in jail, leaving him with less than eight years to go. His father, Dennis Bent, said the conviction and sentence will be appealed.
"This case, it's not over," Dennis Bent said. "He didn't do anything wrong. I don't see it as fully justice."